Baby, It's Cold Outside
Baby, It's Cold Outside (Brendon/Ryan, 2642)
Brendon works in a bakery. A bakery owned by Gabe Saporta! A short in the same place & time as You Could.
For the incomparable hatoyona. Title from a song by the same name that my sister won't stop singing and that Greta Salpeter covered, awesomely, with Thomas Dutton. Nate sings Fergie. (T! to the a! to the stey, girl you tasty!)
“Gabe,” says William, his hands steepled in front of him at the dining room table. “Gabe needs seasonal help.”
Brendon needs a job and he gets one, by way of Tom’s hot friends.
“Gabe,” says William, his hands steepled in front of him at the dining room table. “Gabe needs seasonal help.”
Mikey nods next to him, looking interested. “Gabe really likes freshman. He says he likes your innocence. He says it keeps him young.”
Brendon tries to keep an open mind and fails, miserably. He’s heard that line before and the teacher it referred to ended up in jail. He winces.
“No, no,” says William, shaking his head. “Gabe’s a good man. He’s not like that.”
“I know him,” says Mikey. “He’ll take care of you.”
Brendon is scared of Gabe for five seconds when Gabe rounds the counter of the bakery in a single flying leap. Then Gabe hugs him and he thinks that working for Gabe in the bakery might not be so bad.
“So young,” says Gabe into the top of his head. “So fresh.”
Brendon is a little scared again.
“William told me you were coming,” says Gabe. He lets go of Brendon and steps back, appraising. “Have you ever worked in a bakery before?”
“No.”
“Do you bake often?”
“No.”
“Sweet,” says Gabe, nodding. He giggles. “You’re hired. Come on down to the basement and I’ll get your paperwork.”
The bakery is not scary and neither is Gabe. Gabe is just smiley and hyper - from the constant exposure to sugar, Brendon thinks - and he enjoys young people on account of the fact that he thinks he’s growing old. He’s maybe five years older then Brendon.
“Gently, now” says Gabe, watching Brendon roll cookie dough. “More smooth. Like a, a, - Alex, what’s smooth?”
“A person who succeeds in bedding women,” mumbles Alex, one of Gabe’s two full time employees. He prods a stick of unmelted butter, looking put-off. “So not you. Me, maybe.”
“Aha, fuck off, you.”
Brendon rolls more smoothly.
“Perfect,” says Gabe. “Like Alex’s skills with women. Oh, did I say women? I meant his left hand.”
Brendon’s crushing pieces of candy cane when the bells over the door jingle. Nate sticks his head back into the kitchen. “Some dude wants to see you.”
Gabe dusts his hands on his blue stripped apron.
Nate shakes his head. “Not you, he wants to see Brendon.”
Brendon dusts his hands on his matching pink stripped apron with a unicorn printed across the chest (he thinks Mikey and his art-major-older-brother might have a hand in the aesthetics of the place) and follows Nate to the front.
Ryan Ross is standing at the counter wearing two scarves, one of Brendon’s hoodies layered under one of Spencer’s jackets, fingertipless-gloves and dirty jeans. It’s raining out and he’s steaming a little, in the heat of the bakery.
“You have flour on your face.” He bites his lip.
Brendon rubs at his nose and ends up smearing flour all over his cheeks. “I work in a bakery.”
Nate watches them with unabashed interest.
“I want a cookie,” says Ryan.
“What kind?” Brendon looks down at the display cases and smiles when he realises he helped make about a third of the pastries this morning.
“No,” says Ryan. “Make me a special cookie.”
“That’s illegal,” says Brendon.
“We could make it happen,” says Nate and he wanders off into the back, yelling for Gabe. Ryan looks concerned.
“No,” he says. “Make a cookie for me, I mean.”
He leaves.
Brendon is left staring. He wanders back into the kitchen where Nate, Alex, and Gabe are debating the costs and benefits of making Ryan a special cookie.
“He didn’t mean it like that,” says Brendon.
“Fuck that,” says Gabe. “This has become bigger than your boyfriend, Brendon.”
“Much bigger,” says Nate, nodding.
“Illegal,” says Alex. “So illegal, and I like this place, guys. I want it to remain open.”
Brendon, he kind of likes it too.
Brendon is busy learning how to mix frosting. It’s a slow process. They started with shades of pink and cupcakes and they have to pause so Gabe can catch his breath for laughing, and then again when Alex interrupts Gabe to tell him how immature he is.
“There’s a hot guy outside for you,” says Nate, sticking his head in the door. He eyes the cupcakes. Gabe grins up at him, crouched down over the tray of cupcakes.
“Ryan?” says Brendon. He hasn’t made Ryan his special cookie yet.
“No,” says Nate. “This guy is hotter.”
Hot RA Tom and Butcher and Sisky are crowding the display case, looking overwhelmed, and wet. It’s raining again, like it has for the past three days. Butcher’s not wearing his raincoat, of course.
“Dude,” says Butcher. “This place is intense.”
It kind of really is. Everything is in different shades of pink, blue, and yellow, with the exception of some black tables and chairs pushed up against the window. Brendon is pretty sure that Mikey’s brother is responsible for the unicorns on the back wall and he’s still trying to sort out of the meaning behind the giant cobra that has been spray painted on the floor.
“Can I get you anything?” says Nate, hovering at Brendon’s side. He grins at Tom. Tom smiles back.
“Cookies?”
“On the house,” says Nate. “What do you want?”
“Um.” Tom peers back down at the display case.
Gabe appears from the kitchen and jabs Nate in the shoulder. “What’s on the house?”
Nate gestures at Tom, wordless. When Tom stands up, grinning, Gabe and Nate reel. Brendon grins back at him. Tom winks.
“Can I get a dozen gingerbread cookies?” asks Tom.
Gabe nods. “Can I get your number?”
Brendon laughs out loud. Sisky and Butcher snicker. Sisky high-fives Brendon over the counter.
Tom scribbles down his number on the back of the receipt and gives it to Gabe, ducking his head and smiling at the box of cookies. Brendon retreats to his frosting.
Brendon is so great at frosting. He’s fast and efficient and creative. And, alright, maybe a little heavy-handed, but no one’s ever complained that the cupcakes are drooping a little from the frosting. He likes decorating and he gets to make up his own colors, even if it does mean stained fingers, and sometimes, lips.
He’s in the back, attempting to follow Gabe’s scribbled pattern for the scales on a Cobra cake when Ryan comes in, shaking the water from his umbrella.
“Where’s my cookie?” he says, peering at the display case and frowning. He comes closer.
“I’m making a cake shaped like a cobra,” says Brendon. “It’s green.”
“My cookie isn’t in here. It isn’t green, either.”
“I haven’t made you a cookie yet,” admits Brendon.
Ryan says, “your lips are green and your fingers are blue, and you look Seussian,” and he walks out. Brendon is left staring.
“Ouch,” says Nate. “He says it like it’s an insult.”
“Brendon, where is my cake?” called Gabe.
“Brendon just got owned,” says Nate, shoving Brendon back into the kitchen. Gabe clucks. “Don’t let the haters get you down.”
“Ryan wants me to make him a cookie,” says Brendon. “But he says it isn’t green.” He sits at his table and frowns down at the cake. He needs a lighter shade of green for the cobra.
“Your lips are green,” says Gabe, grinning at him from across the kitchen.
“That’s what he said,” nods Nate. Alex throws him out of the kitchen and Brendon can hear him in the front, laughing as he rings up a purchase.
Ryan, Brendon decides a couple of days later, frowning into his bowl of juandice-colored frosting, will have to have a big cookie, shaped like the sun. It’s raining again and he forgot his umbrella today. He thinks Ryan could use a little sun. Brendon knows he sure could.
“I need help frosting this wedding cake, for tomorrow?” says Gabe. He looks stressed. “The cake needs to be at the reception by nine. Can you stay late?”
Alex and Nate are already tying their respective green and yellow striped aprons on. It’s thirty minutes to closing and they’re just getting started.
Brendon will make Ryan a cookie later. He puts his jaundice-colored frosting into the big refrigerator and rolls up his sleeves.
The bakery opens at nine the next day without Gabe on call. Alex, who stayed even later then Brendon, does not show up until ten and collapses on a table in front to sleep. Exhausted from filling three hundred eclairs last night, Brendon thinks. Nate is early as usual, but he’s making himself coffee and looking kind of sunk.
Brendon, for his part, got a ride home with Nate at two in the morning after Gabe started in on the detail work of the wedding cake, a monstrosity tiered to four and threatening to topple over at any minute. Brendon has no idea how Gabe got the cake over to the wedding.
He puts on his blue stripped apron that has almost turned white through last night’s marathon session of white-frosting-making and pulls out his jaundice-colored bowl of frosting.
Ryan won’t eat something that looked like a liver disease, so he adds a little more red.
“So,” says Nate, wandering into the back. “Gabe and I tried making special cookies a couple of days ago, but that shit turned green. Like this greenish-brown? It was kind of foul.”
“Ryan wouldn’t eat a green cookie,” says Brendon. “I think I’m gonna make him a sun.”
“Mmm,” says Nate. He drinks, sighing. “It’s not raining anymore though.”
“Maybe I’ll make him a raindrop.”
“That’s kinda dismal, dude. Might look like a tear.”
“Or a snowflake?”
Nate scrunched up his nose. “Veto.”
“He wouldn’t eat a cobra, a unicorn, a rabbit, a cat, or a baby seal,” says Brendon. “It has to be special.”
“Unicorns are special,” says Nate. “That’s our signature dish.”
“Ryan wants a cookie just for him.”
There’s a crack of thunder outside.
“You should make him a sun,” says Nate. “I think it’s gonna be quiet today, anyway. We gotta stock up on unicorns though. Mikey and his brother usually show up on Wednesdays, so better get rollin’.”
Brendon puts his less-jaundiced colored frosting (now closer to a dark gamboge) back in the refrigerator.
Mikey and his brother are damn cool. They eat unicorn cookies in the table in the corner by the window and drink two cups of coffee, easy, while staring out at the downpour. They’re starting on their third when Gabe finally rolls in, nineteen minutes after twelve.
“Mikey!” he hails. “My favorite enabler.” Mikey stands and deigns to let Gabe hug him tight. Gabe claps Mikey’s brother on the shoulder. “My man. How’s art?”
Mikey’s brother grunts. Gabe grins and rounds on Nate and Brendon and Alex, leaning against the back wall.
“The cobra brings out your eyes,” says Gabe. “Gentlemen.”
“The bride liked the cake?”
“Nate,” says Gabe. “She ate that shit right up.”
Nate groans and disappears into the back. Alex applauds and follows him. Brendon grins. Gabe grins back. “You’re a trooper,” he says. “You’re by far my favorite seasonal help I’ve hired yet.” He leans forward. “Between you and me, Mikey was crap.”
“Fuck you,” says Mikey.
Gabe bounces. “So how’s the special cookie coming? It’s a gonna be a slow day, from the rain. You’ll have time to work on it, if you want.”
“I think I’m gonna make a sun,” says Brendon. “Ryan doesn’t like any of the animals.”
“Not even the unicorns?” says Mikey’s brother, turning to look at them. Brendon shakes his head. “Not even the unicorns.”
Mikey and his brother look disturbed.
“A sun?” says Gabe. “Because it’s raining?”
Brendon nods.
“That’s pretty sweet,” says Gabe. “Is he your sunshine, Brendon Urie?”
“No,” says Brendon, “he’s kinda dark, actually. But he’s not like, depressed.”
“You should make him a moon,” says Mikey’s brother. “That’s dark but not depressing. Kind of shiny.”
Mikey coughs into his coffee, laughing.
Brendon rolls the dough and cuts a circle in it. He starts to add rays of light to one side, but he runs out of dough.
“That looks like an exploded rock,” says Nate. “Partially exploded. What the hell is that?”
“That’s the edge of the sun.”
“It’s kind of concave,” says Alex. “It’s like a collapsing rock. Out of one side, you know?”
“Like it’s been shot in the side,” says Nate.
Brendon gets his gamboge frosting and peers down at the cookie with Nate and Alex.
“Oh well,” he says and puts it in the oven and waits.
Tom is back, alone this time. Gabe, fresh from success over his wedding cake, descends while Tom is scrubbing a hand through his wet hair.
“We’ve never been properly introduced,” says Gabe, with his hand out. “But I think I’ve seen you at William and Mikey’s houseparties.”
“Gabe, right?” says Tom, taking his hand. “You never called me. What’s with that?”
“We’ve had a busy couple of days.”Gabe waves his free hand. “Tom? Is that it? Tom. What a great name. Would you like a pastry? My business associate Alex was up all night making them for a wedding and we had some leftover.” He grins. “They’re delicious.”
Nate and Brendon are listening in from the back while they stare down at Brendon’s exploded rock cookie. Alex watches from the doorway with a sour expression.
“Really?” says Tom.
“Tasty,” nods Gabe.
Nate starts humming under his breath. “T to the a, to the ‘stey,’ Gabe, you tasty-”
“Shut up Nate,” Gabe calls back. Alex turns and gives Nate a thumbs up.
“Maybe part of it could be a sun,” says Brendon. “And the other part could be-”
“A rock?”
“A moon, I thought.”
They bite their lips.
“Ryan wouldn’t eat an exploded rock?” says Nate. “That’s a little sad.”
“Ryan’s not really into explosions,” says Brendon. “Not in his food, I don’t think.”
“Hmm.” Nate taps his chin. “I’ll get some frosting ready for you. Blue, right? Blue for the moon?”
Brendon nods, frowning.
Tom leaves with a dozen eclairs on the house and Gabe’s phone number.
Brendon’s exploded rock cookie looks like a sun smushed into a moon.
“Huh,” says Gabe. “You have much to learn, my young padawan.”
Brendon shrugs and tries not to look too depressed. “I’ll eat it, whatever. I’ll make him a better cookie.”
“No, no,” says Gabe. “It’s fixable. It’s actually. . .quite artful. Mikey’s brother would really dig it.”
Alex takes a picture on his phone. The four of them gather round the cookie.
“I’ve got it,” says Gabe. “Give it here.”
“Give what here?”
Alex hands him chocolate syrup and a thin cone. Gabe grins at him. “Alex knows what it’s about. Check it out boys.”
He adds eyes to the sun and to the moon, and small, l-shaped noses. The moon gets a tiny, surprised mouth. Alex leans over and squeezes a careful pink mouth to the moon, puckered up.
“Oh,” says Brendon.
“That’s kind of gay,”says Nate.
“Shut up, Nate,” says Alex, smiling. Gabe puts an arm around Alex and raises an eyebrow at Nate. “You just wish Brendon made you a kissing cookie.”
“You guys helped,” says Brendon, looking down at the cookie.
“The magic was yours,” says Gabe dismissively. Alex takes another photo on his camera.
Just before closing, the bells above the door jingle and Ryan comes in, wet and blown-about by the rain.
Brendon can hear Nate and Alex greet him. Nate skitters into the back, completely with out subtlety. “Ryan is here,” he stage-whispers.
Brendon puts Ryan’s cookie on an oversized plate.
“I made you a cookie,” he says and holds it out over the counter. Ryan takes it.
“This is-” he stops. He looks up at Brendon, and he beams.
“You have frosting on your mouth,” he says. Brendon licks his lips and smiles.
Brendon works in a bakery. A bakery owned by Gabe Saporta! A short in the same place & time as You Could.
For the incomparable hatoyona. Title from a song by the same name that my sister won't stop singing and that Greta Salpeter covered, awesomely, with Thomas Dutton. Nate sings Fergie. (T! to the a! to the stey, girl you tasty!)
“Gabe,” says William, his hands steepled in front of him at the dining room table. “Gabe needs seasonal help.”
Brendon needs a job and he gets one, by way of Tom’s hot friends.
“Gabe,” says William, his hands steepled in front of him at the dining room table. “Gabe needs seasonal help.”
Mikey nods next to him, looking interested. “Gabe really likes freshman. He says he likes your innocence. He says it keeps him young.”
Brendon tries to keep an open mind and fails, miserably. He’s heard that line before and the teacher it referred to ended up in jail. He winces.
“No, no,” says William, shaking his head. “Gabe’s a good man. He’s not like that.”
“I know him,” says Mikey. “He’ll take care of you.”
Brendon is scared of Gabe for five seconds when Gabe rounds the counter of the bakery in a single flying leap. Then Gabe hugs him and he thinks that working for Gabe in the bakery might not be so bad.
“So young,” says Gabe into the top of his head. “So fresh.”
Brendon is a little scared again.
“William told me you were coming,” says Gabe. He lets go of Brendon and steps back, appraising. “Have you ever worked in a bakery before?”
“No.”
“Do you bake often?”
“No.”
“Sweet,” says Gabe, nodding. He giggles. “You’re hired. Come on down to the basement and I’ll get your paperwork.”
The bakery is not scary and neither is Gabe. Gabe is just smiley and hyper - from the constant exposure to sugar, Brendon thinks - and he enjoys young people on account of the fact that he thinks he’s growing old. He’s maybe five years older then Brendon.
“Gently, now” says Gabe, watching Brendon roll cookie dough. “More smooth. Like a, a, - Alex, what’s smooth?”
“A person who succeeds in bedding women,” mumbles Alex, one of Gabe’s two full time employees. He prods a stick of unmelted butter, looking put-off. “So not you. Me, maybe.”
“Aha, fuck off, you.”
Brendon rolls more smoothly.
“Perfect,” says Gabe. “Like Alex’s skills with women. Oh, did I say women? I meant his left hand.”
Brendon’s crushing pieces of candy cane when the bells over the door jingle. Nate sticks his head back into the kitchen. “Some dude wants to see you.”
Gabe dusts his hands on his blue stripped apron.
Nate shakes his head. “Not you, he wants to see Brendon.”
Brendon dusts his hands on his matching pink stripped apron with a unicorn printed across the chest (he thinks Mikey and his art-major-older-brother might have a hand in the aesthetics of the place) and follows Nate to the front.
Ryan Ross is standing at the counter wearing two scarves, one of Brendon’s hoodies layered under one of Spencer’s jackets, fingertipless-gloves and dirty jeans. It’s raining out and he’s steaming a little, in the heat of the bakery.
“You have flour on your face.” He bites his lip.
Brendon rubs at his nose and ends up smearing flour all over his cheeks. “I work in a bakery.”
Nate watches them with unabashed interest.
“I want a cookie,” says Ryan.
“What kind?” Brendon looks down at the display cases and smiles when he realises he helped make about a third of the pastries this morning.
“No,” says Ryan. “Make me a special cookie.”
“That’s illegal,” says Brendon.
“We could make it happen,” says Nate and he wanders off into the back, yelling for Gabe. Ryan looks concerned.
“No,” he says. “Make a cookie for me, I mean.”
He leaves.
Brendon is left staring. He wanders back into the kitchen where Nate, Alex, and Gabe are debating the costs and benefits of making Ryan a special cookie.
“He didn’t mean it like that,” says Brendon.
“Fuck that,” says Gabe. “This has become bigger than your boyfriend, Brendon.”
“Much bigger,” says Nate, nodding.
“Illegal,” says Alex. “So illegal, and I like this place, guys. I want it to remain open.”
Brendon, he kind of likes it too.
Brendon is busy learning how to mix frosting. It’s a slow process. They started with shades of pink and cupcakes and they have to pause so Gabe can catch his breath for laughing, and then again when Alex interrupts Gabe to tell him how immature he is.
“There’s a hot guy outside for you,” says Nate, sticking his head in the door. He eyes the cupcakes. Gabe grins up at him, crouched down over the tray of cupcakes.
“Ryan?” says Brendon. He hasn’t made Ryan his special cookie yet.
“No,” says Nate. “This guy is hotter.”
Hot RA Tom and Butcher and Sisky are crowding the display case, looking overwhelmed, and wet. It’s raining again, like it has for the past three days. Butcher’s not wearing his raincoat, of course.
“Dude,” says Butcher. “This place is intense.”
It kind of really is. Everything is in different shades of pink, blue, and yellow, with the exception of some black tables and chairs pushed up against the window. Brendon is pretty sure that Mikey’s brother is responsible for the unicorns on the back wall and he’s still trying to sort out of the meaning behind the giant cobra that has been spray painted on the floor.
“Can I get you anything?” says Nate, hovering at Brendon’s side. He grins at Tom. Tom smiles back.
“Cookies?”
“On the house,” says Nate. “What do you want?”
“Um.” Tom peers back down at the display case.
Gabe appears from the kitchen and jabs Nate in the shoulder. “What’s on the house?”
Nate gestures at Tom, wordless. When Tom stands up, grinning, Gabe and Nate reel. Brendon grins back at him. Tom winks.
“Can I get a dozen gingerbread cookies?” asks Tom.
Gabe nods. “Can I get your number?”
Brendon laughs out loud. Sisky and Butcher snicker. Sisky high-fives Brendon over the counter.
Tom scribbles down his number on the back of the receipt and gives it to Gabe, ducking his head and smiling at the box of cookies. Brendon retreats to his frosting.
Brendon is so great at frosting. He’s fast and efficient and creative. And, alright, maybe a little heavy-handed, but no one’s ever complained that the cupcakes are drooping a little from the frosting. He likes decorating and he gets to make up his own colors, even if it does mean stained fingers, and sometimes, lips.
He’s in the back, attempting to follow Gabe’s scribbled pattern for the scales on a Cobra cake when Ryan comes in, shaking the water from his umbrella.
“Where’s my cookie?” he says, peering at the display case and frowning. He comes closer.
“I’m making a cake shaped like a cobra,” says Brendon. “It’s green.”
“My cookie isn’t in here. It isn’t green, either.”
“I haven’t made you a cookie yet,” admits Brendon.
Ryan says, “your lips are green and your fingers are blue, and you look Seussian,” and he walks out. Brendon is left staring.
“Ouch,” says Nate. “He says it like it’s an insult.”
“Brendon, where is my cake?” called Gabe.
“Brendon just got owned,” says Nate, shoving Brendon back into the kitchen. Gabe clucks. “Don’t let the haters get you down.”
“Ryan wants me to make him a cookie,” says Brendon. “But he says it isn’t green.” He sits at his table and frowns down at the cake. He needs a lighter shade of green for the cobra.
“Your lips are green,” says Gabe, grinning at him from across the kitchen.
“That’s what he said,” nods Nate. Alex throws him out of the kitchen and Brendon can hear him in the front, laughing as he rings up a purchase.
Ryan, Brendon decides a couple of days later, frowning into his bowl of juandice-colored frosting, will have to have a big cookie, shaped like the sun. It’s raining again and he forgot his umbrella today. He thinks Ryan could use a little sun. Brendon knows he sure could.
“I need help frosting this wedding cake, for tomorrow?” says Gabe. He looks stressed. “The cake needs to be at the reception by nine. Can you stay late?”
Alex and Nate are already tying their respective green and yellow striped aprons on. It’s thirty minutes to closing and they’re just getting started.
Brendon will make Ryan a cookie later. He puts his jaundice-colored frosting into the big refrigerator and rolls up his sleeves.
The bakery opens at nine the next day without Gabe on call. Alex, who stayed even later then Brendon, does not show up until ten and collapses on a table in front to sleep. Exhausted from filling three hundred eclairs last night, Brendon thinks. Nate is early as usual, but he’s making himself coffee and looking kind of sunk.
Brendon, for his part, got a ride home with Nate at two in the morning after Gabe started in on the detail work of the wedding cake, a monstrosity tiered to four and threatening to topple over at any minute. Brendon has no idea how Gabe got the cake over to the wedding.
He puts on his blue stripped apron that has almost turned white through last night’s marathon session of white-frosting-making and pulls out his jaundice-colored bowl of frosting.
Ryan won’t eat something that looked like a liver disease, so he adds a little more red.
“So,” says Nate, wandering into the back. “Gabe and I tried making special cookies a couple of days ago, but that shit turned green. Like this greenish-brown? It was kind of foul.”
“Ryan wouldn’t eat a green cookie,” says Brendon. “I think I’m gonna make him a sun.”
“Mmm,” says Nate. He drinks, sighing. “It’s not raining anymore though.”
“Maybe I’ll make him a raindrop.”
“That’s kinda dismal, dude. Might look like a tear.”
“Or a snowflake?”
Nate scrunched up his nose. “Veto.”
“He wouldn’t eat a cobra, a unicorn, a rabbit, a cat, or a baby seal,” says Brendon. “It has to be special.”
“Unicorns are special,” says Nate. “That’s our signature dish.”
“Ryan wants a cookie just for him.”
There’s a crack of thunder outside.
“You should make him a sun,” says Nate. “I think it’s gonna be quiet today, anyway. We gotta stock up on unicorns though. Mikey and his brother usually show up on Wednesdays, so better get rollin’.”
Brendon puts his less-jaundiced colored frosting (now closer to a dark gamboge) back in the refrigerator.
Mikey and his brother are damn cool. They eat unicorn cookies in the table in the corner by the window and drink two cups of coffee, easy, while staring out at the downpour. They’re starting on their third when Gabe finally rolls in, nineteen minutes after twelve.
“Mikey!” he hails. “My favorite enabler.” Mikey stands and deigns to let Gabe hug him tight. Gabe claps Mikey’s brother on the shoulder. “My man. How’s art?”
Mikey’s brother grunts. Gabe grins and rounds on Nate and Brendon and Alex, leaning against the back wall.
“The cobra brings out your eyes,” says Gabe. “Gentlemen.”
“The bride liked the cake?”
“Nate,” says Gabe. “She ate that shit right up.”
Nate groans and disappears into the back. Alex applauds and follows him. Brendon grins. Gabe grins back. “You’re a trooper,” he says. “You’re by far my favorite seasonal help I’ve hired yet.” He leans forward. “Between you and me, Mikey was crap.”
“Fuck you,” says Mikey.
Gabe bounces. “So how’s the special cookie coming? It’s a gonna be a slow day, from the rain. You’ll have time to work on it, if you want.”
“I think I’m gonna make a sun,” says Brendon. “Ryan doesn’t like any of the animals.”
“Not even the unicorns?” says Mikey’s brother, turning to look at them. Brendon shakes his head. “Not even the unicorns.”
Mikey and his brother look disturbed.
“A sun?” says Gabe. “Because it’s raining?”
Brendon nods.
“That’s pretty sweet,” says Gabe. “Is he your sunshine, Brendon Urie?”
“No,” says Brendon, “he’s kinda dark, actually. But he’s not like, depressed.”
“You should make him a moon,” says Mikey’s brother. “That’s dark but not depressing. Kind of shiny.”
Mikey coughs into his coffee, laughing.
Brendon rolls the dough and cuts a circle in it. He starts to add rays of light to one side, but he runs out of dough.
“That looks like an exploded rock,” says Nate. “Partially exploded. What the hell is that?”
“That’s the edge of the sun.”
“It’s kind of concave,” says Alex. “It’s like a collapsing rock. Out of one side, you know?”
“Like it’s been shot in the side,” says Nate.
Brendon gets his gamboge frosting and peers down at the cookie with Nate and Alex.
“Oh well,” he says and puts it in the oven and waits.
Tom is back, alone this time. Gabe, fresh from success over his wedding cake, descends while Tom is scrubbing a hand through his wet hair.
“We’ve never been properly introduced,” says Gabe, with his hand out. “But I think I’ve seen you at William and Mikey’s houseparties.”
“Gabe, right?” says Tom, taking his hand. “You never called me. What’s with that?”
“We’ve had a busy couple of days.”Gabe waves his free hand. “Tom? Is that it? Tom. What a great name. Would you like a pastry? My business associate Alex was up all night making them for a wedding and we had some leftover.” He grins. “They’re delicious.”
Nate and Brendon are listening in from the back while they stare down at Brendon’s exploded rock cookie. Alex watches from the doorway with a sour expression.
“Really?” says Tom.
“Tasty,” nods Gabe.
Nate starts humming under his breath. “T to the a, to the ‘stey,’ Gabe, you tasty-”
“Shut up Nate,” Gabe calls back. Alex turns and gives Nate a thumbs up.
“Maybe part of it could be a sun,” says Brendon. “And the other part could be-”
“A rock?”
“A moon, I thought.”
They bite their lips.
“Ryan wouldn’t eat an exploded rock?” says Nate. “That’s a little sad.”
“Ryan’s not really into explosions,” says Brendon. “Not in his food, I don’t think.”
“Hmm.” Nate taps his chin. “I’ll get some frosting ready for you. Blue, right? Blue for the moon?”
Brendon nods, frowning.
Tom leaves with a dozen eclairs on the house and Gabe’s phone number.
Brendon’s exploded rock cookie looks like a sun smushed into a moon.
“Huh,” says Gabe. “You have much to learn, my young padawan.”
Brendon shrugs and tries not to look too depressed. “I’ll eat it, whatever. I’ll make him a better cookie.”
“No, no,” says Gabe. “It’s fixable. It’s actually. . .quite artful. Mikey’s brother would really dig it.”
Alex takes a picture on his phone. The four of them gather round the cookie.
“I’ve got it,” says Gabe. “Give it here.”
“Give what here?”
Alex hands him chocolate syrup and a thin cone. Gabe grins at him. “Alex knows what it’s about. Check it out boys.”
He adds eyes to the sun and to the moon, and small, l-shaped noses. The moon gets a tiny, surprised mouth. Alex leans over and squeezes a careful pink mouth to the moon, puckered up.
“Oh,” says Brendon.
“That’s kind of gay,”says Nate.
“Shut up, Nate,” says Alex, smiling. Gabe puts an arm around Alex and raises an eyebrow at Nate. “You just wish Brendon made you a kissing cookie.”
“You guys helped,” says Brendon, looking down at the cookie.
“The magic was yours,” says Gabe dismissively. Alex takes another photo on his camera.
Just before closing, the bells above the door jingle and Ryan comes in, wet and blown-about by the rain.
Brendon can hear Nate and Alex greet him. Nate skitters into the back, completely with out subtlety. “Ryan is here,” he stage-whispers.
Brendon puts Ryan’s cookie on an oversized plate.
“I made you a cookie,” he says and holds it out over the counter. Ryan takes it.
“This is-” he stops. He looks up at Brendon, and he beams.
“You have frosting on your mouth,” he says. Brendon licks his lips and smiles.